#ReleaseTheMemo

All three networks on Thursday hyped the “escalating” fight over a “controversial,” “bombshell” memo set to be released alleging surveillance abuses. ABC’s Good Morning America touted Democratic “outrage.” At the same time this story developed, ABC and NBC ignored what should be big news: The revelation that the FBI in 2016 waited a month before telling Congress of additional Hillary Clinton e-mails.

CNN might want to change its name to Collusion Narrative Network; as the network’s morning program New Day spent nearly all of its three-hour time slot Thursday morning discussing the latest developments in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Of course, many in the media desperately want to believe that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in order to secure his upset victory.

The 2016 election still isn’t over for the liberals in the media, who keep trying to find ways to prove that President Trump “obstructed justice” and should be impeached, just past a year into his presidency. Thursday on ABC’s Good Morning America, anchor and former President Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos eagerly hoped they had finally found the evidence needed to oust Trump.

The spin began with an official statement by the FBI, which journalist Pete Williams read aloud. Of particular interest was a line which asserted FBI officials “have great concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Panelists struggled to color inside the lines while discussing the statement’s implications, and within ten minutes, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele had alleged that Congressman Nunes had actively fabricated evidence in the memo.

Showing classic journalistic hypocrisy, New York Times reporter Nicholas Fandos shared the Democrats’ alarm that Republicans may actually reveal what the country’s domestic surveillance organization is doing behind closed doors in his report for Tuesday’s front page, “Republicans Vote to Release A Secret Memo.” An aggrieved Fandos led with criticism of the Republican vote to release the now-famous four-page memo: "Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, disregarding Justice Department warnings that their actions would be 'extraordinarily reckless'...."

On Tuesday, Tom Brokaw appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to participate in the media-wide offensive against Congressman Devin Nunes’s classified memo. Mr. Brokaw declared that he had been loath to compare “what’s going on here" to the Watergate scandal, before proceeding to do exactly that.

On Tuesday, the panel of MSNBC’s Morning Joe turned the spin up to eleven following the House Intelligence Committee’s vote to release Devin Nunes’s classified memo to the public. The memo, which is currently awaiting review by the President, allegedly details abuses of FISA surveillance protocols by high-ranking Justice Department officials.

Twitter's #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag, referring to the four-page memo which allegedly contains evidence of extensive "abuse in ... surveillance practices" at the FBI and Department of Justice, has gotten on Beltway Democrats' nerves. An attempt to pass off Americans' interest in having it released as a campaign led by Russian bots appears to have blown up in their faces, because two of their leaders believed a bogus report from the far-left media fever swamp.

There were disturbing revelations out of the FBI over the weekend when it was learned that the bureau had somehow lost roughly five months of text messages between an anti-Trump investigator and a lawyer he was romantically involved with. Since then there have been calls from Republican members of Congress for another special counsel to investigate the FBI’s shady handling of the Clinton e-mail and Russia investigations. But despite this bombshell news, the three major network news outlets (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have been dead silent.

If you have been on Twitter recently then you know the red hot hashtag that is #ReleaseTheMemo. So why the popularity? Well, according to Rolling Stone, it is due in large part to the Russians. Yes, the Russians Are Coming to Twitter in the form of their bots to hype that hashtag. The subtitle of Rolling Stone's silly article by Bob Moser explains it: "Republicans claim a secret document reveals a Hillary Clinton plot "worse than Watergate" – and they're getting a big boost from Russian bots."

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